The Next Great Thing

"I really thought you'd be either a Bartender or a cook somewhere by now," Terry said as we enjoyed the warm night ocean breeze. "And where's you next book?" he continued. "It's been a long time. Running with the Dolphins has run out of gas. "Tour of Homes needs a new tour." "Aren't you funny?" I replied with a shrug. "So this is Fran?" he asks, standing and pointing to the wall of trees. The outside flood lights shown on her thousand shades of green and she looked delicate and beautiful ... just like she always did. Giving me a smirk as he pointed to the middle of the yard, "And that's the Palm Tree." "Pretty clever, huh," I said, as he studied the oyster shell eyes, nose and mouth, coconut bra and grass skirt. I still haven't thought of a name for her yet but inspiration will come. We've been friends for twenty-five years having worked together for most of them; he in Atlanta with State government and me with Union Mission in Savannah. We were together often and met for dinner, Braves games, pool tounaments and all means of competition between us. We also accomplished a lot of good things for a lot of people. "So what are you going to do?" he asked sitting back down. "Well," I sighed, "the guts of manuscripts for three books are laying on the desk in there. But it's had to do re-writes when I'm writing every day." Nodding, he retorted, "You got to figure that out." "I know," I concurred. "We're consolodating houses and that takes time. I am spending a lot of time working with friends putting together a new way to do multi-social media marketing." "What that?" he asked. I tell him and he says, "We could use that. Let me know when you're up and going." "Thanks," I gratefully tell him. "You know Mike, you got one great thing left in you. I made a career change when I was your age and it really saved me. Of course I didn't have to go through all of the crazy betrayals and stuff you did. But you've got more stuff to do." He's right of course. I've been pretty Zen about it all over the past couple of years ... significantly downsizing my life, the circle of friends surrounding me, filling the empty spaces inside with new things and finding love again. At the same time, a restlessness is growing inside of me. It comes in the middle of the night as I work to dream the next great thing. It manifests itself in the increasing number of phone calls I'm suddenly participating in and an intensity has crept back into my voice. I'm not quite there yet but ... I'm almost there. My Carnival of Friends have declared May to be a new month ... one that will focus on celebration because of survival. A lot of crappy things occured in April. But we have birthdays, pool christenings, and Cico de mayo to plan parties around. I'll also celebrate the passing of the old and the continuing birth of the new. Next great things are already happening. And I'm right on the verge of at least one more. "Don't rush it," Terry concluded. "It'll happen." "Yep," I affirmed. And we celebrated as good friends do.